6th Street had a clear territory—Santo Domingo—which could be divided into two zones:
Their main stronghold was undoubtedly in Rancho Coronado. A suburban neighborhood with lots of prefab houses, a strong presence of veterans, ex-military types, or people scarred by past conflicts.
Then there was the Arroyo zone—more industrial, but also under the gang's influence, especially in garages, workshops, and warehouses. That was exactly where the children he needed to recover were being held: inside a warehouse used for storing vehicle parts for the local mechanics.
The warehouse's facade was nearly indistinguishable from the rest of Arroyo's rusted industrial buildings. A faded sign hung askew, reading "AutoRepuestos Mendoza," as if trying to blend in among the noise of cooling towers and nighttime cargo trucks.
He slipped between the containers, covered by his cloak, which absorbed the dim sodium lamp light. His footsteps were silent, barely a whisper on metal and concrete thanks to a feline stealth potion he had taken.
Even though he had the intel, he wasn't dumb enough to come here without stopping home first to gear up—and to bring Sasha in on the operation. Kiwi was already asleep, but they'd surely need a netrunner to extract info on who was really behind the kidnapping.
The warehouse was about 40 meters long, with shelves full of body panels, dismantled engines, armor plating, rusty bolts, and transmission boxes. In the center, under a flickering white light, stood an improvised cage made from steel panels and welded bars.
Inside it, ten children—dirty, asleep, and shivering—huddled beneath a blanket still stained with motor oil.
["Okay… If this isn't a trap, I'll dye my hair tips red like Aunt Gloria."]
["You've been saying that for two weeks. You just want an excuse to copy her without your mom lecturing you."]
["Alright, jokes aside. I checked everything—just three lookouts, two patrolling mechs, and one terminal connected to the door system."]
In front of the cage, two armed guards chatted idly beside a portable generator. Both wore the usual patriotic tattoos of 6th Street and patched-up bulletproof vests. One of them smoked a menthol cigarette; the other scrolled through something on a chip connected to his neural port, looking annoyed.
In the farthest corner, two light bipedal mechs, military-grade adapted for urban environments, stood in rest mode. Their optic sensors glowed a faint amber red. They were powered by a nearby console vibrating at a low frequency. On a workbench, a third gang member fiddled with a box of injectors and pharmaceuticals.
["Keep them blind. I'm going in."]
["Internal systems compromised. I've cut their access to reinforcements. Don't shoot anything directly connected to the main panel or the secondary network resets. You've got… six minutes starting now."]
Faelan didn't reply. He closed his eyes to center himself, old school.
From the ground, hair-thin roots emerged, invisible to the naked eye. One slipped through the rust and coiled around the first guard's ankle. Before he could react, he was yanked backward, crashing into a stack of spare parts. His scream was cut off by a blunt sound—Faelan had sealed his mouth shut with a living vine.
The second guard turned.
"What the f—?"
An inner wind swept the warehouse as Faelan released the aura of SCP-166 with force—but carefully, keeping the children out of its reach. Invisible to most, but lethal to synthetics.
The second guard staggered as if drunk, then dropped to the floor.
Then the nearest mech suffered. Its sensors went dark, internal lights flickering. It let out an error beep before collapsing to its knees, a victim of a short-circuit triggered by proximity to the aura.
The tech cursed when he realized there was an intruder. He slammed a button on the console. The second mech responded: it lit up red and aimed its weapons at the children's cage. It didn't care that one of its allies lay unconscious in the line of fire.
But Faelan was already in motion.
He leapt from the container like a feline, propelled by enhanced muscles. In midair, he extended his palms, releasing a spray of golden spores from his skin. The spores devoured part of the mech's chassis on contact.
The mech fired—short bursts of explosive lead—but a dome of branches shot up from the ground, deflecting the bullets in an instant. They bounced off as if hitting a turtle shell.
Faelan landed in front of the mech, eyes glowing, fearless.
Spikes erupted from the floor, piercing and wrapping around the mech's legs. It buzzed with a panicked electronic beep before tipping over onto its side, immobilized. Its motors whirred frantically, trying to push against the restraint, but Faelan just stepped forward and laid a hand on it.
The robot stopped moving as time seemed to slow around it.
The technician had seen it all. And like any wise man among fools, he tried to run while the enemy seemed distracted. He tripped, fell, and realizing he might've drawn attention, crawled toward a toolbox. Still panicking, he pulled out a military knife.
"You have no idea who you're messing with, you damn hippie freak!"
"Hippie?" Faelan's eye twitched.
Oh right. Ex-military types.
He walked toward him without rushing. Small flowers sprouted beneath his feet, blooming and closing like a natural phenomenon. The blanket of vegetation kept the dirt from soiling him.
"I don't care who you are."
He extended his hand, and the floor cracked open slightly. A thick root emerged and wrapped around the man, pinning him upright like a wax figure trapped in living wood. The tech trembled—partly from fear, partly because the knife had gotten tangled up and was now pressing dangerously against a very important spot.
"Who sent you?" he asked bluntly, while expertly attaching a remote hacking chip to the console.
"It was a dirty job, I don't know everything!" the tech confessed without hesitation—he wasn't paid enough to die for this. "Ramirez! Contract from Westbrook! They were supposed to take them alive! A caravan was arriving at dawn!"
Sasha confirmed over the channel:
["I just extracted the IP address from his terminal. They're masking something under industrial logistics—it doesn't sound like 6th Street. This reeks of implant trafficking or worse."]
Faelan was confused. That didn't make sense.
["Why would they want the kids' implants? It would've made more sense to go after the adults' instead."]
In fact, for various reasons, many children didn't receive more than basic implants until adolescence, even if their families could afford better. There was a reason why, despite the black market for implants, you never saw child-grade ones for sale.
It just wasn't worth the effort, and no one would buy them.
["There's nothing else to get. The tech spilled everything."]
Faelan took a deep breath.
"Deactivate the cage."
The technician looked at the thick root holding him, then at Faelan.
With what, the mind?!
"Ah, forget it," Faelan scratched the back of his neck as he saw the panel flicker.
"What? Wait—!"
The technician was enveloped by the root, which slowly shrank into a cocoon.
Faelan moved directly to the cage after confirming the perimeter was clear. He used some of the same golden spores on the mech's lock. The cage let out a dry click, like it was breathing for the first time in years. Faelan gently pushed open the gate, which creaked loudly. Inside, the dim light from flickering LED panels barely revealed ten small bodies.
"Great. Now I'm pissed off and sleepy. Bad combo," Faelan muttered, noticing an extra detail.
None of the children looked older than eight.
Not wanting things to spiral out of control—or traumatize them—Faelan decided, after confirming none of the kids had optical implants, to pull down his hood and remove his glasses before they woke up.
The aura of SCP-166 pulsed softly around him, ensuring only a small fraction was active. He passed some leaves under their noses, whose scent helped counteract the sedative.
One of the children, a girl with one of her braids forcibly cut, woke up first. Her eyes, still cloudy from the drugs, slowly focused on Faelan's figure—watching her from the entrance, haloed in a soft golden glow, barely visible to anyone who didn't believe in impossible things.
"Are you… an angel?" she asked, her voice slow and groggy.
Faelan knelt, trying not to laugh at her skipping the obvious antlers.
"No. But I came to get you out of here."
The others began to stir. Sasha whispered urgently through the internal channel:
["A random patrol's approaching from the east. Not 6th Street. Could be NCPD... or the real buyers. We need to move the kids, now!"]
Faelan turned toward the back wall of the warehouse, where a low hatch covered in tarps led to Arroyo's old storm drain system. He'd noticed it on the blueprint Sasha gave him before entering.
"We're going out through the bottom."
He extended his hand, and the vegetation responded like an old friend. From the cracks in the ground, thick roots rose and pried the heavy metal cover open with a groan. A putrid stench rose from the tunnel, but there was no time to be delicate.
The smallest child, still dizzy, tried to walk and stumbled. Faelan picked him up effortlessly and used the surrounding plants to shape a leaf-like sled out of hardened vegetation. He carefully arranged the children on top and lowered them down.
Sasha reported from outside:
["Recon drones incoming. Visual contact in three minutes."]
Faelan gave one last look at the remains of the fallen mechs. The warehouse reeked of burnt oil and failure. He knew this wasn't over—he needed to make sure it ended properly.
He placed his hands on the ground and accelerated the rot of synthetic matter within a thirty-meter radius.
When he sent out the pulse, cracks began spreading across the walls. The mechs rusted in real time, consoles sparked, and the electrical systems looked as if they were infected by an invisible plague.
The warehouse would be unrecoverable. Its structure had been weakened enough to collapse with the next rain.
Faelan jumped into the tunnel, retracting the roots and erasing any trace of his presence. Instantly, Sasha activated her own interference module.
["Cover sealed. I checked—no cameras, no sensors. You're clear to go."]
Inside the tunnel, everything became shadows and dampness. But even in the darkness, Faelan still glowed faintly, as if life itself touched only him. Seeing the children uneasy due to the lack of light, he gently stroked the walls, causing bioluminescent moss to sprout along his path, fading as he passed.
…
The old Church of Saint Elias no longer held mass. Not officially.
Its façade was covered in soot and graffiti, and the broken windows had been replaced with metal sheets cut into the shape of crosses. From the street, it looked like just another husk in Heywood, but beneath, among sealed corridors and repurposed crypts, Father still maintained a shelter for those who had fallen outside the system.
Faelan (once again hooded) pushed open a rusted hatch at the end of the drainage tunnel. A staircase led up to a corridor behind the sacristy.
The inner door opened with a soft creak. On the other side, Father was waiting. He wore a black coat over a faded gray cassock, and around his neck hung a small, worn cross of chrome and copper. Two women stood with him—former combat medics, now caretakers at the shelter.
"How many?" Father asked, without hesitation but with anxious eyes.
"All ten. Sedated, but no serious harm."
The nurses immediately began checking the children, though the stiffness in their movements betrayed their nerves around Faelan. He didn't mind—not like he knew them.
One of the kids burst into tears upon feeling a warm blanket and the smell of soup. Another clung to him tightly. It was as if they could sense they'd soon be back with their families—their fear-fueled emotional dam finally broke.
Father made the sign of the cross and murmured a short prayer, just for himself.
"You have no idea how happy you've just made their families."
"I don't," Faelan admitted without shame.
Father nearly choked on his own breath at the reply, shattering the solemn atmosphere they'd just built.
That's not how the script goes, son!
"If you're interested in who's behind this, we got some info from a tech: Ramirez."
To avoid exposing Faelan's Pip-Boy, Sasha had been the one to transmit the data.
Father pulled out an old datapad and opened the file, frowning as he likely connected dots they didn't know existed. A minute later, he sighed and put it away.
"Don't forget my payment."
He didn't wait for Father to say anything else. Once the children were in good hands, Faelan dissolved into butterflies and vanished from Saint Elias Church.
The man and his trusted aides watched the butterflies flutter away in silence, a few making the sign of the cross to ward off bad luck.
"I still don't know your name, boy… but if one day you trust me enough to share it, I'll know there's still hope for this world," he thought.
And Faelan? He just wanted to sleep. Calming ten children under ten years old had been more mentally exhausting than taking out those guards and mechs. So the moment he got home, he didn't even bother to remove his disguise.
[Good night, Sasha.]
He collapsed onto the bed, instantly asleep.
Neither he nor Father seemed to notice that one of the medical assistants looked far too concerned, asking seemingly casual questions to comfort the kids—but every question was centered on the druid.